[Fwd: Re: rough consensus (was Re: "trouble maker")]

[todd glassey]

Harald's right. Consensus needs to be obtained on specific items and not
generalizations. The reasoning for this is that Consensus is something that
MUST be demonstrable in retrospect if its to be of any value at all in
demonstrating fair-play... Otherwise, there is an issue...

Todd
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Harald Tveit Alvestrand" <harald at alvestrand.no>
To: "Brian E Carpenter" <brian at hursley.ibm.com>; "Scott W Brim"
<swb at employees.org>
Cc: <problem-statement at alvestrand.no>
Sent: Thursday, July 17, 2003 1:56 AM
Subject: Re: [Fwd: Re: rough consensus (was Re: "trouble maker")]


>
>
> --On 16. juli 2003 15:01 +0200 Brian E Carpenter <brian at hursley.ibm.com>
> wrote:
>
> > Scott W Brim wrote:
> >>
> >> I like the idea that Chairs should document why they declared consensus
> >> (or the lack of it).
> >
> > Agreed. But another thing that may be going on is Chairs making
consensus
> > calls too late.
>
> I think the problem WG meeting's discussion of the problem document on
> Tuesday actually was a fairly telling example of some of the subtleties of
> the rough consensus process.
>
> We had a number of "issues thought to be open".
> On every issue, we had a large number of speakers, trying to improve the
> WG's understanding that the issue was indeed real, and exploring subtle
> ramifications of the issue. People just observing the people at the mike,
> and not having read the drafts, would have a hard time detecting what the
> consensus of the room was.
>
> But when the WG chair called for consensus on *whether the document text
> was a good enough description of the issue*, the consensus of the room was
> pretty clear - on some issues, near-unanimous consent that it was good
> enough; on other issues, a clearly divided opinion that means that the
> issue has to be rehashed on the list.
>
> Calling consensus after just listening to the discussion is very hard.
> Calling consensus after asking a specific question and seeing the response
> is a lot easier - and a LOT easier to record.
>
> My 2 cents....
>
>                      Harald
>